Rejoicing in our God-given role as women removes acedia and restores purpose. Embrace your mission with wisdom and energy to build culture and glorify God.
I remember sitting in a college class and being told to think about what I thought my mission in life is. What did I want to do with my life? What was my life going to be about? “Write it down,” the professor said. Happy for my my recent catechism instruction, I wrote down not something I made up, but rather, the Right answer: “man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
My professor didn’t believe there was such a thing as a Right answer to his question. He wanted each one of us to “think for ourselves,” and “discover our passion.” How disconcerting for an 18-year-old to have to make something like that up out of nothing! I, however, didn’t have nothing. I had a heritage. I had a God.
I can follow my heart, because my heart is in Christ. Abide there, and, as Luther said, “do as you please.” Yes, my heart —and yours— is still deceptive and prone to wonder, so the abiding is active, constant, necessary. Daily the Holy Spirit provides conviction, nudging, and comfort—He is in my heart; He is the one in my heart that I listen to.
God has not left us to wonder and make up our own purpose or mission or path.
It is wisdom to walk in our created purpose. Such a life is a joy and delight, not a dry, dusty duty. We will be glorifying and enjoying God for all eternity after Jesus returns, but God allows us even now to begin that life, baby step by baby step, here on earth. Yes, indeed, He commands it, and He works it in us by sanctification.
A couple esoteric-sounding words provide us the categories we need to ground our everyday choices in wisdom: teleology and acedia.
Teleology is the study of the ends, the purposes, of things. The Westminster Catechism answer above is a teleological statement.
Acedia is the old Latin name for sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Generally, we reduce sloth to mean mere laziness, but acedia takes us back to a deeper understanding of human motivation, action, and what it feels like to lack both.
Lacking all motivation and giving into a discontent listlessness is acedia, sloth, a deadly sin – not just a bad mood. Acedia, in turn, is caused by losing touch with our teleology as humans.
I would go further, actually. Acedia, often conflated with depression, is so prevalent for women today because we have neglected the reality that women qua women have a teleology distinct from that of men.
Although both men and women have a shared human teleology – to glorify God and enjoy Him forever –how we image God is different. Our mission, our calling, as women, is particular. Until we embrace –and apply– that particular teleology, we will be plagued by acedia.
In Acedia and Its Discontents, R.J. Snell observes, "For the slothful, embedding the self in the mandates of good work occasions sorrow and repugnance, even horror." Women are called to particular expressions of good works – to be nurturing, educative, and gracious.
Women are called to be builders and beautifiers. We are to resonate with Eowyn in her repentance when she says, "I will be a healer and love all things that grow and are not barren."
Instead of rejoicing in our role as glorifiers, we have envied the men and pretended that women and men are supposed to equally do all the same things, despite obvious creational differences and biblical commands. Those who have tried to reclaim the differences have tended to do so by diminishing women.
When you lower the standards for women, you also lower the standards for all of society and culture, because women make society and culture happen. Not only is much of the substance of culture the direct work of women, but any social or culture work men do is inspired by and rewarded by women.
Men build culture for families. Put only men all alone on a desert island and you get Lord of the Flies. To civilize a land and build cities, you must send the men with wives - not because the wives do all the work, but because men work differently when they work for the future that women represent.
Therefore, the more intelligent, wise, and fruitful – and there are many ways for a woman to be fruitful – the women of a society are, the more industrious, wise, and heroic the men will have to become.
Women set the levels of expectation, so the fastest way to dissolve civilization is by removing them – either by lack of education or by moving them to the men's position.
As we wives and mothers gain knowledge, we must apply it in a feminine way: for life, for beauty, for social cohesion. The world requires both feminine and masculine applications of knowledge and wisdom, and we received our assignment when God made us female. Male and female created He them, because it takes both to fully image God in the world.
We should revel in our role as women, but instead we get embarrassed by it and do our best to pretend people don't actually work that way anymore, now that we are modern and smarter.
This is a lie of Satan promoted to destroy people, not mature or develop them. The fastest way to take women out of the equation and make society vulnerable to collapse is to make women ashamed to be women.
We need to enjoy being women as well as enjoy our women’s work. What’s more, we need to desire to be the women we were created to be. When we are embarrassed and diminished, our sights are set too low and our desires are not only misdirected, they are also inadequate to our position and purpose.
Snell continues in his description of acedia: "Acedia thus reveals itself as ontological boredom, for the bored lack adequate desire." Boredom, thus, is a temptation that takes us out of the game.
On the other hand, rejoicing in who we are and in what we are called to do brings energetic joy and strength. Remove the rejoicing, and you have acedia. To remove the acedia, we must reconnect to our purpose, to our calling, to our mission.
The more on mission we are, the more we will thirst for knowledge and understanding and the more we will apply any knowledge we gain to our real lives, because our real lives – not a fantasy world or any realm of forms – is where the action is, where God is working in and through us.
When we desire what God desires – our sanctification as women – acedia will have no hold on us.
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